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Trust me, Sugardaddy

Caroline Lamb looks into the increasing number of Sugardaddies for students.

This time last year the BBC announced the rise of students looking to ‘sugar daddies’ as a means of funding their time in university. A quarter of a million students, it was stated, were using sugar daddies. The claim however, came from dating app ‘Seeking Arrangement’ calling into question its validity, as it is unclear whether the figure is of active users of the site or includes anyone that simply signed up. Nonetheless, ‘Seeking Arrangement’ is an app designed to be the mediator between ‘sugar babies’ and their prospective sugar daddies; one could more impertinently refer to it as a kind of gold diggers tinder.

The app is not the only one of its kind; other dating websites such as sugardaddy.com offer the same type of services. In fact, one quick Google search will provide you with a wealth in choice of dating websites and apps designed to help you bag your sugar daddy. So, why the sudden increase in popularity? Aside from the obvious monetary incentives, there may be numerous explanations for this upsurge in popularity. The accretion of rising student fees, mounting debt, a more sexually liberal generation and unfiltered access to the entire world via the Internet makes for a potent cocktail of potential for both the sex and furthermore the sugar daddy industry.

Whether it be to pay their way through university, or to allow for a luxurious lifestyle, students are signing up in droves to find a sugar daddy for themselves. To get a better idea of why this might be happening, I asked several Bristol University students their opinions or experiences on the issue. One student in particular told me, “I feel sugar daddy’s are becoming more and more acceptable. I genuinely have a few friends who have signed up for the websites to do it. I don’t think its a bad thing, the idea of a pretty young girl giving an older guy some company that he otherwise wouldn’t get is kind of nice. I think maybe there shouldn’t be such a taboo around it, but at the same time I can understand why there is. I had a friend in Australia who got caught up in the whole scene, and was sleeping with a sugar daddy who got obsessive and controlling and it was pretty scary I think. I have no clue if I’d go on a date myself, I feel like maybe I would but then when it came down to it I’d p*ssy out.” In fact, this was a very common theme among the students Epigram spoke to. The idea of a sugar daddy or a date or the lifestyle or potential benefits was something they were not all too concerned with; it was however the execution of said relationship they were unsure if, in reality, they could pull off.

There were, conversely, a few others who were less inclined to concede over the issue, one stating ‘I don’t think I could pull it off or be comfortable with it. The money would be great, but I would feel morally implicated. I would feel like I was selling myself, I’d feel cheap and degraded’. Yet, overall, I found that the majority of students I spoke to were not aggressively averse to the idea, in fact quite the contrary. However, very few admitted to or claimed to have actively tried to use the dating sites themselves. As often happens with such choices in life, the idea of it is incredibly appealing. However, the reality is not – and it is only a certain few who can truly handle it.

As the saying goes, everything has its price.

Do you have a sugar daddy story to share with us? Let us know in the comments or via social media links below.